1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a message automatic notification system, a message automatic notification method, a communication terminal device, and a recording medium. The invention particularly relates to a message automatic notification system, a message automatic notification method, a communication terminal device, and a recording medium, which use presence information for automatically notifying available conference participants of a message as to the holding of a conference or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to hold an urgent conference or to have a meeting in a limited time with related parties, an operator needs to contact conference participants in regard to, for example, participation requests.
When making participation requests by telephone, the operator needs to call each person one by one, which is bothersome. Further, the operator cannot contact a party on the other end when the party is absent. Also, when making participation requests by e-mail, there may be cases where the other party is out of office, where the other party is in a conference, and where the other party is busy with many other obligations, and therefore the other party cannot read the e-mail, so the operator may not obtain a reply from the other party.
Each of those cases is caused by the fact that the contacting side cannot know the circumstances of the other party which is to be contacted.
As one of recent information services, JP 2003-316707 A (mentioned as Document 1 below), for example, discloses a presence information service for notifying a communication status (or presence state) of a user to the other user on the other end of the communication terminal (e.g., online, offline, or out-of-office).
Document 1 describes a presence control method, used in a use terminal on which a communication system such as an IM (instant messenger) is mounted, for notifying a communication status of a user to the other user. The use terminal has means for setting a communication status of a user to be notified for each other party registered in the terminal or for each group of other parties to which the other party belongs. Then, the use terminal registers, in a server, information on a communication status to be notified for each set other party. When other users inquire about the user's status, the server identifies a user inquiring and notifies of the user's status set for each other party. Thus, the server can change the user's status to be notified (e.g., online, offline, or out-of-office) for each other party or for each other party group.
On the other hand, when contacts in regard to conference participation requests etc. are made, there assumed a case where a message is conveyed by telephone or e-mail at an appropriate time by considering the other party's status or the like. In this case, the message sender needs to monitor the presence information of the other party and to perform sending operation when a status turns to be appropriate for sending a message. However, the sender has to wait until the status of the other party turns to be appropriate, which may be inconvenient for the sender. Therefore, there may be cases where it is difficult for the message sender to perform the sending operation or where the sender may forget to send a message at an appropriate time.
To eliminate such inconveniences, JP 2002-315053 A (mentioned as Document 2 below), for example, discloses a mobile communication system capable of message transfer, call request, and call reception according to the other party's conveniences in terms of time and place.
Document 2 describes automatic sending of messages accumulated in a message center to subscribers. A base-controlling station stores: a message transfer status specified by a mobile communication terminal (date and time, place, etc.) and a message type; or a communication start status, communication other party information, and communication type. When an access is made from the mobile communication terminal, the base-controlling station searches for the message transfer status corresponding to the mobile communication terminal. When it is find out that the message transfer status is stored, the base-controlling station controls the base to perform communication corresponding to the message transfer status (such as mail transfer, automatic call to a specific destination, etc.). That is, the base-controlling station automatically sets the base to perform communication. Therefore, the mobile communication system described in Document 2 can control message transfer, call request, and call reception according to subscriber's conveniences in terms of time and place.
However, when the organizer intends to hold an urgent conference or to have a meeting in a limited time among related parties, the organizer may not need all ten members to participate. For example, only five of the members may be enough for the organizer to hold a conference. At that time, it would be convenient if the message sender intending to hold a conference can grasp current situations of conference participants and simultaneously automatically send a message as to the holding of a conference to the minimum number of available members.
The technologies disclosed in Documents 1 and 2 cannot always appropriately cope with demands for automatically sending the message as to the holding of a conference to the minimum number of available members. That is, the presence information service described in Document 1 can grasp current situations of conference participants but cannot search for available members to satisfy the minimum number. Also, the mobile communication system described in Document 2 can transfer a message according to other party's conveniences in terms of time and place but does not consider whether the possible participants can participate the conference. Also, the mobile communication system described in Document 2 is not a system that sends a message as to the holding of a conference only to available conference participants.